My tolerance for nostalgia is now exhausted. The back injury, the
physical therapy, Riddler’s Greatest Hits… shattered hopes regarding
Catwoman.

It was an idiotic fantasy, this idea that once my back is healed and I am
able to resume patrol, that she might accompany me, for a few nights, at
least. I even dared to dream she might like it enough that a few
nights could stretch to a few weeks, and then, perhaps… Idiot. Won’t I
ever learn? Investing in a fantasy that can never be, just because the
night is cold and the cave is empty.

That entry of hers from the night I was asleep: “Maybe it's just knowing
there’s no one to go upstairs for. It’s just me. Down here.
With the bats.” Did she even realize what she was writing? No
one to go upstairs for. Just me down here with the bats. How
those words have haunted me. Yet the dreams I had of her back then
have become a reality. It’s no longer an empty manor and a cold bed
waiting when I climb those stairs each night after the logs. Next week
when I resume patrol, she will be there, just as she was before this damn
injury. She will. Selina. Warm and tender and alive...
If that impossible wishdream could come true, was it really that absurd to
hope for more? Continue crimefighting at my side once I’m back on the
job, a true partnership. Is that more improbable than Catwoman waiting
in Bruce Wayne’s bed at the end of the night when Batman’s work is done?

Instead, she’s given it up entirely, while I have another week of
physical therapy before I can risk the Batline. Riddler is running the
team ragged scattering cat-clues all over town, while all I can do is sit
here coordinating positions on a map and picking up Catwoman’s bad habits.

All those insanely chatty, pointlessly detailed, and completely
undisciplined logs of hers. Reading her narratives all these weeks, my
own entries, even the unsealed ones, have become alarmingly introspective.
I am sure that will be quickly terminated once I return to the field.
Having a night’s worth of incident to chronicle will put an end to this
preponderance of personal content. For now, however… there really is
little else to do until the next Riddler strike.

It’s clear that Nigma is unaware Selina has quit. At first I wasn’t
sure, the first clue was ambiguous. The board game windows reappeared,
this time at Macy’s. Robin and Batgirl inspected them one by one and
found a clue rolled up inside “Miss Scarlet’s” cigarette holder:

I'd say it's more purple than scarlet, But a bad girl's a bad
girl all the same.She's nothing to do with the lead pipe or the rope,
But what's between the kitchen and the study is another game.

Obviously purple and bad girl referred to Selina, but as a taunt, that
could have been directed at me as much as her. As a riddle announcing
a crime, it was absurdly simple. Robin had it solved before he called
it in. The kitchen and study are corner squares on opposite ends of
the Clue board connected by a secret passage, and there’s a new restaurant
by that name in SoHo.

So Robin and Batgirl went to SoHo and established a perimeter while
Oracle ran the usual checks on the owner(s). It wouldn’t be the first
time a riddle appeared to name one location when Nigma really intended to
hit the owner’s home across town. Secret Passage, however, was not
owned by a private individual. It was part of a corporate consortium
headquartered in Phoenix. By this time, the Batcomputer had run an
analysis matrix of the restaurant’s menu, printed reviews, and any mention
of it in internet blogs. Finding no coded messages or additional
clues, we forwarded the lack of alternative targets to Robin and Batgirl.

They went in cautiously, expecting to find a crime in progress or about
to begin. Batgirl scrutinized the patrons’ movements, balance, and
body language for any sign of concealed weapons or malicious intent, while
Robin pinpointed the location of the cash receipts. There, taped to
the face of the cash register, he found a slip of paper with the following:

Do Cheshire cats drink evaporated milk?

It was hardly a riddle. It was, quite pointedly, a reference to the
Mad Hatter. So Robin left Batgirl at the restaurant “just in case” and
went to Tetch’s last hideout at Hudson Hairpieces. There he found
“A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.”
Obviously a Two-Face reference, so Robin proceeded to the old Flick
Theatre which produced “CAT ADVICE: Take some time to eat the flowers,”
i.e. Poison Ivy. Wisely deducing that Robinson Park was too big to
hide any sort of clue Nigma expected us to find, Robin proceeded to the
greenhouse Ivy sometimes uses in the FloMa district. There he was
greeted with “Purranoia: the fear that your cats are plotting against
you” and he noted that these alleged clues resembled fridge magnets more
than riddles (an observation that should have occurred to him earlier).
Nevertheless, he proceeded to the Hudson U campus, since “Purranoia” must
allude to the Scarecrow.

Oracle conducted a brief search of the university website and found that
office hours were listed for one name that did not appear on any faculty
directories: one Patricia Urrano, Interdisciplinary Adjunct. Or, as it
appeared on her office door: P. Urrano I.A.

A search of that office produced “Cats' favorite game: ‘Ha! Made you
look!’”

It seemed impossible that Nigma would send Selina to a Joker hideout if
he thought she was crimefighting in my place. However hurt and angry
he may be, he is simply not that cavalier with human life, particularly
hers. And however irrational he may be, he is not so deluded that he
couldn’t see the potential for disaster. At first we were stymied.
If “Ha! Made you look” did not allude to Joker’s “Ha-Hacienda,” what other
Rogue tie-in could there be? It was Dick who came up with the answer.
He had been in Bludhaven most of the night and only heard the story from
Barbara when he got home. Hearing it all in a in the span of a few
minutes rather than seeing it play out over hours gave him the crucial
perspective to see the punchline for what it was.

Ha! Made you look.

And he did, the rascally psychopath. But I knew Riddler too well to
believe this was a simple prank. A riddle points to a Riddler crime,
that’s how he operates. He could no more leave this string of riddles
unresolved by a criminal act than he could commit a crime without announcing
it first with a riddle. There was more to come, I knew.

I didn’t tell Selina. I still haven’t.

It’s been a week since we fought. When I read how she was ranting
in the logs, I admit at first I saw it her way: the fight we had 984 times,
as she put it. Crimefighter vs. criminal, right vs. wrong, Bat vs.
Cat.

It was the same fight, at first. If you can’t hold to your beliefs
when it’s difficult, then they’re not beliefs. They’re hobbies.
A crimefighter cannot go making distinctions between the criminals he
abhors—the ones it is a positive pleasure to take down—and those he may find
appealing if they had met under other circumstances.

It was exactly the same fight, until it ended. When it would
usually end. How many times had we clashed under that banner?
And every time, it ended the same way: Catwoman disappeared into the night
and I finished patrol. I returned to the cave, I sat in this chair, I
typed up the log with as much detachment as I could muster, and I went to
bed. I didn’t sleep, and usually, I bit Alfred’s head off in the
morning over nothing. The realization started pounding in my
core: this wasn’t the same fight at all. She was standing three feet
from the chair where I had made those log entries in the old days.

The reality of it pounded like it would break my chest open: She wasn’t
going to disappear into the night. Crimefighter vs. criminal?
Right vs. wrong? She was going to peel off her mask and take a shower
before going to bed. This wasn’t Bat vs. Cat. It was what my
father taught me. “Bruce, we have a rule in this house. We don’t
go to bed angry.” … … … … :: :: ::
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: … … …

And with that exquisite feline timing, she picked that moment to
flit through the cave. I’m not about to stop working when she does
that, but I have taken the precaution of setting an encryption matrix on all
activity at my workstation that prevents it being mirrored on the overhead
viewscreen. If she asks, I’ll tell her what I’m working on, but until
she does, it’s best to leave things as they are.

The second night of Riddler clues was at least free of Rogue allusions.
Just more fridge magnets:

Cat: Murphy's way of saying “Nice Furniture!”

Science asks “How?” Philosophy asks “Why?” Cats don't care.

Nice kittens give you time to clot between attacks.

On and on. Each little witticism was written out in heavy yellow
marker on a thick green index card. A careful whiff of these cards
indicated the presence of tartaric acid, which acts as a kind of invisible
ink much like lemon juice. Once a catalyst was applied, parts of the
yellow would darken—usually within the large sweeping “C” of the word cat—to
reveal a new location. That next location never housed a crime, only
another clue:

“NO!” to a cat means “Not while I am looking.”

As anyone who owns a cat knows: no one can own a cat.

A cat’s worst enemy is a closed door.

I still hadn’t solved the real riddle, what Riddler crime this was
all leading up to, but I was beginning to see another facet of his plan.
If Selina were still on the case, she would have been ready to strangle him
after clue 7 or 8. By the end of the second night, Robin had collected
84. … … … … :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
:: :: :: :: :: … … …

It wasn’t the same fight with Selina. It never would be, now.
The Bat and Cat don’t exist in a vacuum. Even if I wanted to, I can
never look at her and see only “Catwoman” and it’s the same for her.

We talked. There was no cold, empty night for her to swing into
with a Bast statuette that didn’t belong to her, and there was no empty cave
for me to return to. So we talked. Once again, I brought up the
armor. She was so pissed; it was really adorable. She thinks I’m
“obsessing” on it. In one sense, I suppose she’s right. I have
been haunted by the prospect of her being out there without it, exposed to
all the hazards of crimefighting without any protective barrier between her
and it.

And suddenly there it was: the metaphor. There’s more to “armor”
than wearing a bulletproof chestplate. The Nigma situation illustrates
absolutely why she needs better armor, and it illustrates absolutely why she
can’t “do” armor. Armor is protection. It is a barrier between
the vulnerable inner person and the harsh assaults that crimefighting
brings. Without that separation, how can Catwoman hope to fight
someone Selina considers a friend? Her costume, as she designed it, is
a natural extension of who she is: colorful, playful, sexy, and utterly
exposed. It is all out there. She leads with her feelings,
following her instincts as naturally as I shift my weight on the Batline.
Catwoman does what she feels. An instinctive, not a strategist.
Armor, and the rigidity and discipline it implies, is not in her nature.

It is necessary for crimefighting.

Crimefighting is not in her nature.

So she’s back to prowling. She’s not avoiding me; she still eats
and sleeps in the cave. She’s just gone back to her old routine and no
longer patrols. And she seems to have an odd sort of selective
blindness to certain areas of the cave. It’s as though she’s unaware
that crimefighting is the business of the place. Or to be more
accurate, it's as though she's mad at Batman and giving him the cold
shoulder while remaining on perfectly warm and loving terms with Bruce.

The contradiction isn’t lost on me. She’s rubbing it in.
She’s saying she was right all those years ago and our life together now
proves it. I said it could never work: I am a crimefighter and you’re
a thief. She said I was a rigid, judgmental jackass. Now we’re
together, and I’m happier than I would have thought possible back then.
In declining to fight with Bruce, she’s driving her point home with Batman.
The only thing I can’t figure out is if it’s intentional. If she’s got
that much Machiavelli in her, or if it’s just unconsciously feline logic.
… … … … :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: … … …

A cat's way of keeping the peace: Claw Enforcement.

By Night Four, his goal was obvious.

Cat \kat\ (n): small, four-legged, fur-bearing extortionist.

He wanted her angry.

Catastrophe: an award for the cat with the nicest tush.

So mad, she couldn’t see straight.

Cat (n): A walking ego with fur.

So mad she couldn’t think straight.

Catalyst (n): an alphabetical list of cats.

So mad she would make mistakes.

The moving cat sheds, and having shed, moves on.

Running all over town, location to location, never getting the
satisfaction of a confrontation, always being met with another one of those
puerile ditties.

Catholic (n): a cat with a drinking problem.

By the time she finally saw him, she would see nothing else, only the
chance to wring his scrawny neck. She’d go charging into whatever trap
he had set for her, the trap meant to keep the hated crimefighter safely out
of the way while his real scheme played out.

Cats have 9 lives. Do radioactive cats have 18 half-lives?

If it was me he was baiting, it would be a deathtrap. But Nigma
would not want Selina dead. He would merely want her detained, and he
would want it to be unpleasant.

Curiosity kills more mice than cats.

It was a painful task, but I put myself in Nigma’s position and thought
through the various ways to hurt Selina:

1. Kill her—he doesn’t want that.

2. Validate the Gotham Post’s lies about her—after which, she would kill
him. He doesn’t want that either.

3. Hurt Wayne—which he would love to do, but years of trying have shown
it’s not as easy as it sounds.

4. Hurt cats—not worth considering. That’s sociopaths and nascent
serial killers, completely inconsistent with Nigma’s pathology and
self-image. He will certainly consider bluffing: threatening to blow
up an animal shelter without ever intending to do so, but he’ll quickly
reject it as a lame and shallow stunt unworthy of a Rogue.

5—a variation on 1. Place her in a faux deathtrap where she is
never really in danger.

He would like that idea, since the illusion of deadly peril would require
the kind of magician’s stagecraft that appeals to his puzzler’s mentality.
He would make a list of potential devices and get as far as sketching a
guillotine or an iron maiden before he realizes the snag: it’s a magic
trick. Everything on his list is. A few variations here and
there, sure, but nothing that a moderately alert individual wouldn’t
recognize from a half-dozen stage magician’s “DEATH-DEFYING” finales.

Nigma is in a position to know that Selina’s hatred for Zatanna is more
than a wild story from the Rogue rumor mill. Mad as he is, he wouldn’t
want to pull that particular tiger’s tail. It’s one thing to
deliberately punish her for hurting him. It is quite another to give
offense as an unintended waste product of an unrelated scheme. His
pride would balk at that. He couldn’t let Selina think THIS was the
best he could come up with. He couldn’t let her think he was unable
to whip up a plot without subtext. He would feel it reflected badly on
him. He would spend a day trying to make it work, recognize all of his
attempts as flimsy rationalizations, and finally give up.

6—a variation on 2. Strike at her standing as a Rogue…

I had progressed exactly that far when an image came into my mind.
Seeing it through a villain’s eyes, I could almost feel my lips curling into
a malevolent smile as this ideal target revealed itself in all its
vindictive perfection.

Catworthy.

If I was a villain bent on attacking Selina where she lived, what better
way than to take a few ironic swipes at her stature as a jewel thief, as THE
jewel thief, the one by which jewels worth taking are defined. It was
perfect. If I wanted to punish her for turning “white hat,” what
better way than to make her defend Objects of Desire, the very jeweler who
proclaimed their wares CATWORTHY in 10-foot purple letters.

I sent Batgirl to observe the building, so we’d have some idea what to
expect when the vital clue came in. Even after the exercise getting
inside Nigma’s head, I was… surprised when I learned what it was.

EDIT: Unacceptable. As long as I am participating in this indulgent
practice, using the logs as a kind of father confessor, I must at least be
honest about it. I was not surprised, I was enraged. For a full
minute I could think of nothing but a gloved hand closing around Edward
Nigma’s face and slamming the back of his head into the wall with a force to
crack plaster—not to mention his skull. A thousand times—ten thousand
times—I have been gripped with fury in the face of some criminal outrage,
but I have never actually, literally tasted bile. Until now, I
thought that a fanciful figure of speech. Of course, in the face of
those ten thousand other criminal outrages, I had the ability to act.
This sitting around “healing” does not foster patience. If I knew
where he was—and if I had been out there these past weeks, I certainly WOULD know where that sniveling monster was—I would scrap
the last week of prudence, suit up, get out there, and introduce that
precious cranium of his to the concept of a concussion. Multiple.
Multiple severe contusions to the head and neck by way of a well-trained
fist that knows exactly how much force can be administered to deliver
maximum punishment without…

This is what comes of listening to her. She thinks our life
together proves she was right all those years ago. Well, I was right
too, obviously. Eddie’s humanity, her good friend Eddie
who would never hurt her. I let her soften me, and it will never
happen again.

The shift came on the third clue last night. After “Cats do not
keep mice away, they preserve them for the chase” and “Anything not
nailed down is a cat toy,” the format changed to an actual question.

“Catwoman, are thy claws sharp?”

Still not a riddle, but when the catalyst was applied and the invisible
ink darkened, no new location was revealed. Instead, only certain
letters darkened into boldfaced type.

“Catwoman, are thy claws sharp?”

The key letters to phonetically represent “Catworthy.”

In Riddler’s mind, Selina would be charging to Objects of Desire, intent
on foiling his crime and pummeling him beyond recognition. Instead,
Robin went in. He went in as a crimefighter does, through the service
entrance, not as a jewel thief would through the skylight. He
proceeded cautiously, as I taught him, not blinded by rage. He spotted
each tripwire, each electric eye and trigger, disconnected the gas nozzles,
and secured the fear toxin for safe disposal.

Fear toxin. It’s almost inconceivable. Maybe I was wrong not
telling Selina what was happening—but I couldn’t stop to think about that
now. The toxin trap was meant to keep the crimefighter occupied while
the real crime played out elsewhere, and I had yet to determine what that
crime was. Over 100 “clues” Robin had collected, but I had absolutely
no idea what they pointed to.

Selina came home from her prowl, saw I was busy coordinating reports from
the team, and duly ignored the situation. She disappeared into the
costume vault, came out a while later wearing my kimono, and left a mug of
cocoa at my elbow. I think she kissed my cheek and said something
about going to bed, but I couldn’t stop to focus on that. Somewhere a
crime was being committed in my city and I couldn’t see it. Oracle was
monitoring every conceivable channel and there was nothing. Not a
blip. Robin had to go home. It was nearly dawn and he has school
today. Batgirl gave up an hour later. Oracle and I stayed at it.

At 9 o’clock, she found it. Bank errors, hundreds of them.
Once the banks opened and human beings entered the equation, transactions
began to surface from the previous night, transactions that no one seems to
have initiated. Hundreds of transfers between bank accounts with no
apparent significance and no common denominator. Many were at Gotham
banks, but others were from accounts in Metropolis, in Keystone, in
Tallahassee. One would receive $3120 from another and then transfer
$5100 to a third. Eventually it must all lead back to Riddler, but we
have yet to determine how. Oracle is still crunching data, as is the
Batcomputer, and while Selina is still sleeping, there’s nothing for me to
do but sit here and… type.

When the cat clues began, there didn’t seem any reason to tell her.
Nigma wasn’t sending riddles that required her inside knowledge, and his
shenanigans didn’t appear to be threatening anything that would endanger
innocent citizens. If any of that changed, I obviously would have
acted. I would have told her that I respected her desire to keep a
distance from all things crimefighting, but Riddler was now putting
innocents in harm’s way and I needed the answers to stop him.

If it was strangers he threatened, there would have been no
question, no question at all.

Leaving me to wonder… I mean, fear toxin. He was going to gas
her with fear toxin.

The situation was obviously more volatile than I knew—which is no excuse.
I should have known. A week since their confrontation. A week
Nigma’s been alone in his head, allowing his anger to fester.
Strangers I never would have left in danger. So Selina was having a
mood, not for a nanosecond would I have let that stop me. I would have
gone to her, I would have said “He's putting innocents in danger, I need the
answer in order to stop him.” For strangers.

Such a rat’s nest of simultaneous transactions could only have been
initiated by a computer virus. This one infected the Cirrus interbank
network via an ATM in Bangladesh—superficially. In reality, the virus
originated at a Gotham I.P. transmitted into a Bengal Central Bank ATM in
Dhaka. It was transmitted—with typically Nigmaesque arrogance—through
the WayneTech satellite. That irksome detail aside, the discovery of
the virus was not a surprise. What we had yet to determine was why
THESE PARTICULAR ACCOUNTS were affected (and what any of it had to do with
Selina).

As soon as she got her hands on the virus itself, Oracle quickly ID’d the
pattern: the bank accounts spontaneously transferring funds to each other
had all been accessed by ATMs in Gotham. They were the last
accounts accessed from ATMs at or near each location where a cat-clue was
found.

I had been scrutinizing these locations on 2- and 3-dimensional maps
since the first clues were left, looking for any kind of pattern. I
found nothing of note. Even now that the nature of the crime is known,
I have been unable to find the crucial link between 133 cat-related fridge
magnet quips and this massive transfer of funds. The map, marked with
green indicators at each ATM location, looks exactly like it did marking off
cat-clues: a great shapeless blob.

Selina is up and having breakfast. She hasn’t asked what I’m
working on, she only asked if I’d been to bed. When I didn’t answer,
she brought me coffee and a roll, and set the latter on the table inside
the lower corner of the hologrammap as if she didn’t see it.
Impossible woman.

I have to tell her about this, of course. The fear gas alone… it’s
clear now I should have told her all along. But there’s no time to go
into it now. She’s certain to be upset, and until this situation is
resolved, I cannot have my focus diverted from—
… … … … :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: … … …

Riddle solved.

Damn him.

$3120.

The amount was repeated in a number of transfers. Oracle says she
noticed it, but it didn’t seem to mean anything on its own so she didn’t
mention it.

3-1-20. C-A-T.

The virus pulled account numbers from the ATMs at the cat-clue locations,
so each account can be associated with a given point on the map.
Marking all the accounts affected produces a meaningless blob. Marking
only those that sent or received $3120 produces a very definite
shape: diagonal 1, diagonal 2, and an inverted v with a small circle on top.
I recognized it, of course, but just in case I didn’t…

“WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?”

It turned out Selina could see the hologram after all. She
certainly saw the wispy, minimalist representation of a cat’s eyes, nose,
and mouth now superimposed over the city grid as a series of ATM locations.
Hardly surprising, since she wakes up to it every day. The watercolor
called “Zen Cat” has hung in our bedroom since she moved in. Before
that, it hung in hers.